A foundry in Kolhapur having two plants :

This company is a supplier of ground engaging tools, sprockets, idlers etc. to almost all the major OEM of earthmoving equipments in India. For certain parts, they are the single source of supply. The company had problems of very long lead time, high WIP and poor inventory turns.

The management was convinced that the answer to their problems was in applying the TOC operations solution Drum-Buffer-Rope i.e. DBR.

Thus, the mode of operations was changed to DBR in April 2007.

The implementation was concentrated on one plant first and then the other. In about four months, the WIP in Plant 2 declined from 30 days to about 13 days. It kept on declining steadily to go below 10 days in about eight months. It continues to decline steadily.

Simultaneously, the monthly despatches from Plant 2 rose by about 95% in four months. The inventory turns have improved by more than 25% and continue to show a rising trend even now.

The Plant 1, which is the focus now, is showing promising results. The inventory turns have increased by about 53% whereas the monthly despatch has increased by about 35% compared to the values one year ago.

For both the plants put together, the inventory turns have improved by about 28% whereas the monthly despatches have increased by about 100% by value as on 31st March 2008 i.e. in one year.

All this was possible without making any significant investment in addition to capacity or resources.